A Day at the Space Zoo
by Mela Sunstrong
Summary: The Dwarf comes across a zoo ship run by bots, and Rimmer takes them up on their offer to purchase the Cat. Then it's up to the crew to bust the feline out, if they can manage to stay out of trouble themselves.
1. How Much is that Kitty in the Window

_Takes place sometime around season four._

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><p>Some three million years into deep space, Dave Lister was sitting in the cinema, with his feet propped up on the chairs in front of him, watching Mary Poppins singing from between his toes. He hummed along with the music whilst munching on his popcorn, managing both tasks with all the grace of a camel. He was on his fourth movie of the evening, his sixth bowl of popcorn, and his ninth can of lager, and so was feeling pretty content. Until a certain hologram walked into the room and shouted "Off!", freezing Julia Roberts in mid-fragilist.<p>

"All right, Lister, what have you done with them?" Rimmer demanded.

Lister twisted around in his seat to face his dead bunkmate. "Hey, I'm in the middle of something. Play!" Poppins resumed her singing. Rimmer came to stand in the next aisle down, right in front of him, arms crossed. Lister rolled his eyes and said, "Off. Look Rimmer, I haven't done anything to any of your stuff. I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about my slippers, Listy, the ones you've probably done something horrible to. The navy blue ones with the little yellow ducks printed on them."

"I haven't done anything with your slippers, Rimmer." Lister complained. "Now can I please go on watching the film?"

"No, you may not! Not until I've made sure you haven't lit my favorite pair of slippers on fire, filled them with moldy cheese, sent them out of an airlock, shrunk them in the wash, dropped them in acid, or worse, put your feet in them." The hologram ticked each fate off on his fingers.

Lister started picking bits of popcorn off of his shirt. "I didn't do any of those things to your precious slippers, an' I don't see what difference it'd make if I did. You can't wear them anyway."

"What difference would it make! They're my property. I own them, it's the principle of the matter. You don't just go messing around with a dead person's things!"

"Yeah, you do, that's what people write wills for."

Rimmer glared at him. "Apart from that, I'm trying to get Holly to scan some of my things into digital format, so I can have a hologramatic copy of them."

"Hang on, so you're trying to get touchables an' you come looking for your slippers rather than Inflatable Ingrid?" Lister said, incredulous.

The hologram looked uncomfortable. "Yes, well, I'm having a little trouble finding her, too."

Rimmer's embarrassment was interrupted by the arrival of the Cat. The feline sat down behind Lister, but not before leaning over and stealing his popcorn bucket. "Go!" He demanded, and the film resumed play. "Hey, you haven't gotten to the part with the plump, mouthwatery pigeons in it yet, have you?"

Rimmer did his best to ignore the stupid moggy. "So you're absolutely positive you haven't seen my things?"

"Ingrid's folded up under the bath mat in the captain's private quarters," Lister admitted, "But I swear I don't know where you're smegging ducky slippers are. Have you asked Kryten? He might have put them through the wash or somethin'."

Cat's brow furrowed. "Ducky slippers? You were supposed to wear those things?"

"And what would you know about it?" Rimmer questioned sharply.

The Cat spread his hands. "I thought they were one of those bags you monkeys cough your hairballs into."

"Cat, those would be called sick bags, and they're for sick, because we 'monkeys' don't happen to do our laundry with our tongues!" The hologram's jaw was clenched, and his nostrils were flaring. "You mean to tell me you hacked a hairy one into my slippers?"

"Sure I did. Don't worry, alphabet head, I clean up after myself. I flushed them down the swirly water bowl when I was done."

"You what?" Rimmer shouted. Lister was grinning away at this turn of events, Rimmer was winding up to say some rather nasty things, and the Cat was completely oblivious to the upset he'd just caused when Holly appeared on the screen.

"Sorry to interrupt the film, and that's my favorite part, too." She said. "But I just thought of a story I wanted to tell you guys."

"Holly, we're not in the mood for stories. We're in the mood to jettison the Cat's entire shoe collection into deep space." Rimmer said, causing the Cat to leap to his feet in alarm.

Holly kept talking. "But it's a really good story! See, once there was this big red ship, and then a little grey ship came along, and since the red one was so much bigger than the grey one, the little grey one went into orbit around the big red one."

Lister got up. "Wait, there's a ship outside?"

Holly seemed surprised. "Yeah, there is, how'd you guess the end of the story? Anyway, it's the SSS Ark, and I've just received a video brochure from her."

"A brochure?" Lister said. "I'll round up Kryten and we'll all have a look at it in the drive room, then."

Moments later, the four crew members gathered around the main screen in the drive room as Holly loaded the video. Her face faded away into a scroll of fancy lettering declaring 'Visit the SSS Ark, home of the Grace Longshore Memorial Space Zoo!' Following this title were shots of varying animals, accompanied by a voice boasting of the facility's forty decks, holding thousands of species. Some of the exhibits were the size of air plane hangars. It gave a run down of the zoo's gift shop and food courts. Lister even spotted an Indian food place among them. What's more, it showed the ship packed with people, although the video was dated the 24th century.

"Do you think anybody's alive over there?" The scouser wondered once the brochure ended. "I mean, somebody's got to be taking care of the animals."

Holly popped back onto the screen. "I think you're about to find out, Dave. I'm getting a transmission. Just hold on a tick while I route it."

A robot appeared on the monitor. It was slightly bigger than a skutter, with a design that wasn't very much more sophisticated. It had a thin, upright body that rested on a wheeled platform. From this central metal spine protruded two sets of similarly thin arms, each with a pair of pincers on the ends. A small camera eye was mounted on the top. Whenever the robot moved one of its four arms, or rotated on its spine, or did much of anything for that matter, the machinery made a series of distinct clicking noises. A tinny voice came over the intercom.

"Service bot 300-65975 addresses you warmly. Welcome to the Grace Longshore Memorial Space Zoo, potential visitors. It has been exactly three million years since we have last had customers. Would you like to purchase tickets?"

Lister waved at the robot. "Can I ask a quick question first? Have you got any humans over there?"

"We have a modest human presentation in the Hall of Taxidermy," came the prompt and polite reply.

"You'll have to forgive it, Mr. Lister," Kryten broke in. "This line of service bots are efficient, but their AI tends to be very rigid."

Lister said, "I'm talking about living humans, like me."

The little camera lens zoomed, appraising him. "We have no living humans on board the Ark. Would you like to purchase tickets?"

"It's too late at night to go over there now." Rimmer said. "We'll think about it in the morning."

Cat nodded approval. "He's right, I need to get my beauty sleep."

The service bot's arms began to rotate, click click clicking as they went. "What species is this? It is not listed in my database."

"You don't know a cat when you see one?" Cat said. He gestured to himself. "Just for the record, clicky thing, I'm the finest example of felis sapien you've ever laid eye on."

"This zoo would like to make a generous offer for the purchase of this felis sapien."

Rimmer lit up. "How generous are we talking?"

"Rimmer, don't be a smeghead." Lister said. "Cat's part of the crew, he's not for sale. Besides, I don't see what good money does us with nowhere to spend it."

The bot persisted. "This zoo is authorized to barter. We have many attractive supplies which may prove useful to you."

Cat folded his arms, taking a no-nonsense stance. "Listen buddy, this kitty is not for sale! Believe me, you couldn't afford it if I was. I'm priceless!"

Kryten waved an arm at the screen in disgust at his fellow machine. "Just end the transmission." He couldn't see why anybody ever bought those things when mechanoids were obviously the superior product. Of course, service bots were cheaper, but clearly you got what you paid for, skutters and clickers alike. "There's no need to worry, sirs. As thick-circuited as they are, once you've convinced them that Mr. Cat is not for sale, they should stop pestering us."

Lister shrugged. "As long as they leave Cat alone and they don't want to add me to their collection of stuffed people, I'm all for a visit tomorrow."

They all filed out of the drive room, heading for bed, or in one case, a place with an outlet nearby to power down and charge for the night. All except for Arnold Rimmer, who suddenly remembered that his beloved inflatable pal was still languishing, deflated, in the captain's quarters. He walked back into the drive room, looking to see if there might a skutter about. There weren't any, and he was about to leave again when the Ark's video transmission turned back on.

"This zoo is authorized to barter." The clicker bot repeated. "Are you certain you do not wish to sell your fine felis sapiens specimen?"

Rimmer considered the proposition. "What sorts of things exactly are you offering?"

Click, click, click, went the robot. ""We have food and fuel. We also extend a modest collection of preserved fruit bats, a ping pong table, a tape of Reggie Dixon's best Hammond organ hits, and the AR game Conquests of Napoleon."

The dead man paced back and forth, weighing the pros and cons. Fuel and fruit bats aside, the AR game alone was extremely tempting. Still, it was a bit rude to sell your own shipmate. "I don't know. I own that particular Dixon tape already..."

"We would like to extend in its place the special collector's edition of the book The Complete History of Glue."

"That's the one with the fold out diagrams and color photos, isn't it? Deal!"


	2. Catnapped

**Notes: Thanks to butterflygirl113 for your glowing review. Also in general, I'm trying to keep up a buffer of chapters, so I'll hopefully be throwing one up here every few days or so. Here's 2, enjoy :)**

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><p>Cat was curled up in a bunk in one of the women's dorms, flipping through a fashion magazine before bed, with a cup of warm milk close at hand. He liked to have a wide variety of sleeping places, and the entire block of girl's dorms was one of them. They tended to have more wardrobe space than the men's dorms, and they came stocked with a wider array of shiny things.<p>

Having gone through all of the pictures in the magazine, Cat tossed it aside and gulped the last of his milk down. "Time for my main snooze!" he said to himself. He carefully arranged his hair net, took out a silvery eye cover from underneath the pillows, and put that on, too. Cat lay back with his hands folded over his stomach and envisioned a little fence with fish jumping over it. "One little fishy, two little fishy, three little fishy..."

_Click, click, click, click_.

His sharp ears picked up the strange noise. Cat lifted the eye cover and peered about the room. Finding nothing out of sorts, he resumed his counting. "Four little fishy, nine little fishy, five little fishy..."

_Click, click, click, click!_

The Cat sat up and shouted, "Quiet down, I'm trying to get my beauty rest over here! How am I going to stay gorgeous if I don't get my beauty rest?" Once more, silence ensued. Grumbling to himself, the Cat tried going back to sleep. "Eight little fishy, fifteen little fishy, two little fishy again..."

_Click, click, click, phht!_

Cat whipped the eye cover off and pulled out a feathered dart that had just buried itself in his well-dressed arm. He stared at it in horror. "Green? With _these_ sheets?" His vision went all fuzzy. He began to slip into unconsciousness, but not before he made out the two clickers clicking their way towards him.

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><p>Lister was up at ten the next morning; practically the crack of dawn. He breakfasted alone in his room on cereal in flat lager. He didn't see Rimmer around at all. He supposed that the hologram had left earlier to alphabetize the ship's toothpaste supplies or something. At any rate, Lister would have to round everybody up for their trip to the zoo.<p>

He walked into the hallway and was confronted with a very large bat in a glass frame that was hung on the wall. "What the smeg is that doin' there?" He wondered.

Lister found Kryten in the laundry room. On his way there, he'd found fourteen more fruit bats of varying sizes on the walls. "Kryters, what's with the bats? They're all over the ship. It's a little bit freaky."

The mechanoid set aside the socks he was folding. "You're guess is as good as mine, sir. I thought it might be some strange prank of yours. By the way, I don't suppose you know why there was a ping pong table in my supply closet?"

"No. Holly!" Her face appeared on a screen above the dryer. "Do you know where Cat and Rimmer are?" Lister asked.

"Arnold's in the AR room. I don't know where the Cat is," she answered.

"He's probably preening somewhere." Lister remarked. "We'll see if Rimmer's got anything to do with all this."

Rimmer was just slinking out of the AR suite when they found him. He'd been playing _Conquests of Napoleon_ all morning, and he was certain the game was full of glitches. There wasn't really any other way to explain why he couldn't get past the first level.

Lister held up a glass-encased bat. "Rimmer, can you explain why these are all over the place?"

Ah yes, the bats, Rimmer thought. He _was_ just going to have the skutters take them off to some storage closet somewhere. They must have taking a liking to them instead and decided to put them on display. This left him with only one answer. "Aliens!"

"How about a ping pong table?"

"Aliens!"

"I'll take that as a _no_." Lister sighed. "Anyhow, you have to help us look for the Cat, so we can get over to the zoo today."

"The Cat? You're looking for the Cat?" Rimmer hadn't been thinking about making explanations when he cut that deal. "He's...probably busy shampooing his eyebrows or something. You know he hates being interrupted when he's doing that."

"Yeah, yeah, but we still have to find him. Come on." Lister headed off on the search, fruit bat in hand, followed by Kryten and a very anxious Arnold J. Rimmer.

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><p>When the Cat finally regained his senses, he wished that he hadn't. He lay still for a while, then slit his eyes open one at a time. He had a terrible headache, and the light seemed far too bright. If he was feeling this bad, he hated to think of how he looked right now. When he went to sit up, he felt something cold tickle his neck. Cat reached up to find a plastic tag dangling from his ear. "Now that has got to look tacky!" He looked around to see where he was.<p>

It was big metal room, about the size of the JMC on-board gymnasium. The floor was covered in black, spongy, rubbery stuff. That was about it- aside from himself, the place was as empty as a dog's brain. "At least the walls are shiny," he said, and went to the nearest one to assess his wardrobe situation.

The wall was a pleasingly reflective one. Cat frowned at the little blue tag in his ear. It had a serial number on it. He tried to take it out, but it was clamped in with a metal button that wouldn't budge. He shrugged off his bed robe, being fully dressed underneath, and examined himself again. "I don't know about that blue with this burgundy," he frowned.

Next Cat rooted through his pockets for emergency beauty supplies. He came up with a miniature battery-powered iron, some eyeliner, three combs, and a tube of hair gel. "Damn, I must've left my portable waxing kit in my other suit." He settled for ironing the rumples out of his clothes.

While the Cat was busy prettifying himself, a thin voice intoned, "Specimen has recommenced consciousness. Beginning biome estimation process." A beam of light shot down from the ceiling, enveloping the feline in wavery lines for a few seconds. Then the room began to rumble. The floor started undulating, rising up to assume shapes. The forms would sink down again, then return with more clarity.

In the space of a few minutes, the Cat found himself in a strange little world. The floor was now covered in grass, which in turn was littered with thick rugs. A forest of slim constructions had sprouted up all around him, some reaching clear up to the ceiling. They were, in fact, a series of giant-sized cat condos. These were interspersed with trees that had glimmering disco balls hanging from their boughs. Small birds shifted restlessly amongst the branches. The air now carried the sweet fragrance of cat nip.

Cat snuffed out one last wrinkle from his outfit. "Time to go investigate- this way!" He was about to head into his new environment when the strange voice returned.

"Initial acclimatization complete. Now fully realizing the exhibit."

The wall went from shiny to clear. The Cat found himself standing on the side of a lane that stretched out along the edge of his enclosure and onwards. "Okay, investigating_ that_ way." He strode over the edge and _fzzzt!_, he was immediately flung back. His body tingled unpleasantly all over. Apparently there was one of those invisible, magic walls along that edge.

Cat turned back and found the other three walls remained wholly physical. The one directly across from the force field wall was still shiny, but the other two had turned to glass. He peered into one of the exhibits next door. It was dense, green, and jungley. A female leopard was lounging on a low lying tree branch. She watched him with precious little interest, tail swishing lazily back and forth.

Cat grinned at her. "Hi there, babe. This is your lucky day, because you get to meet me. I'm the Cat. I don't know what the hell this place is, but it's sure got cute neighbors. I think you even match my underwear, and if that's not a great way to start a relationship, I don't what is."

The leopardess stared at him impassively.

"I've got some investigating to do, but don't you go anywhere, gorgeous." Cat danced off into the condo forest. An over stimulating environment, blossoming romance, and quite possibly the smell of cat nip had robbed him of all his concerns for the present. While he hated being kept anywhere against his will, for now he wasn't the least bit worried about where he was, how he'd gotten here, or how the smeg he was going to get out.


	3. Supercalifraglistic

"And do you know what else? I'm quite sure I heard him say he didn't want to go to the zoo at all. So I say we respect his wishes and leave him alone, perhaps for a few weeks." This was the latest in the long string of Rimmer's excuses as to the Cat's disappearance. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to any of his theories. Even the rather brilliant one about aliens having kidnapped the Cat in order to study the nature of unvarnished stupidity went unnoticed.

The three of them were collected in the drive room. Kryten was feeling extremely proud of himself for coming up with a lie that was equally helpful and outrageous. Holly was broadcasting it throughout the ship. "Attention, a beautiful lady cat has appeared in the drive room! I repeat, a sexy cattess has appeared in the drive room!"

Kryten set his internal timer. After five minutes with no sign of the Cat, he slipped out of smug mode and into worry mode. "Oh my. If the prospect of meeting an attractive member of the opposite sex hasn't brought him running in a matter of seconds, I fear that Mr. Cat might be in serious trouble."

"D'you think the fumes from his triple strength hair gel made him pass out somewhere?" Lister wondered. "But the last time that happened, Holly was able to find him. Hol, are you sure you can't pick up any trace of him?"

Holly thought about it for a moment. "You know, this might have something to do with the vessel that came over here from the _Ark_ last night."

Lister stared at her incredulously. "Those clicker things from the zoo? They came over here? And you couldn't have said anything about that from the beginning?"

"Sorry, I wasn't really paying attention at the time. I've had that Mary Poppins song stuck in my head since yesterday. How does that word go again? Fragiligeristic? Supercalimalingula?"

"Holly."

"Expi-limpi-dimpi-rimpi-wotsit-osis?"

"Holly!"

"Super cauliflower list that gets me to the dentist?"

"Yeah sure, that's it there, now can you please tell us what happened last night! Did those clickers come aboard and kidnap the Cat or something?"

Holly checked her surveillance records. "Something like that, yeah. They brought some stuff on board with them and left it here. I bet that's where all those fruit bats and things came from."

"And you just let them on board without our permission?"

"Of course not!" What did they think she was, stupid? "Arnold told me to let them have the run of the ship. I wasn't really paying attention after that."

Lister and Kryten turned to fix Rimmer with an accusing stare. The hologram held up his hands and took a step back. "Now gentlemen, just who are we going to listen to here: that senile, rusty-circuited old computer or your trusty, loveable pal Rimmsy?"

"When you consider that sellin' the Cat to the zoo is exactly the sort of thing trusty and loveable you would do, the choice is a bit obvious." Lister answered.

"Alright, alright, I did, but you have to admit, it's where he belongs."

"Cat belongs with us! So we're going to punch those guys up right now, and you're going to demand a refund."

Holly reconnected communications with the _Ark_. Rimmer faced the clicker on the screen reluctantly. He knew he'd never hear the end of it from Lister if he didn't. "Hello again. I'm calling to inform you that the fruit bats you paid me with are defective, so if it isn't too much trouble, I'd like to return them."

The clicker whirred its camera lens at him. "Would you like to exchange your fruit bats for cash or barter them?"

"Cash sounds lovely..." Rimmer received glares from his companions. "Although the thing is, I need that cat back that I sold you. You probably don't want it anyhow, it's quite unintelligent."

"This zoo holds a no-return policy for all transactions involving life forms. Would you like to exchange your defective fruit bats for a free pair of tickets?"

"No refunds? Oh well, nothing to be done then, sorry for wasting your time." He turned and shrugged at the other two. So much for that.

"Hold on," Lister said, speaking to the clicker. "Are you absolutely certain you can't sell the Cat back to us?"

"This zoo holds a no-return policy-"

"Okay, okay, I get the idea. We'll take the tickets, then."

"An excellent choice, sir. You will receive your tickets upon arrival. Enjoy your visit!" With that, the clicker transmission ended.

"That'll at least get two of us in," Lister said.

"What, to say our last goodbyes?" Rimmer asked, although he knew full well that his bunkmate wouldn't let it drop at that.

"There aren't going to be any goodbyes, cause we're bustin' Cat out of there." Cat was part of the crew. More than that, Lister felt personally responsible for him, if only for Frankenstein's sake. Besides, he knew the Cat would go bonkers without his suits.

"You and Kryten have fun then." Rimmer waved at them. "I have a spot of reading to do, so if you'll just excuse me..."

"Hang on, Rimmer. You put him in there, an' you're gonna help get him out. We'll just smuggle your light bee in or something."

"Actually," Holly broke in, "I was looking at the _Ark_'s stats, and they appear to have a half-decent hologram suite of their own. It's funny – it's running, but I can't find whatever it's projecting. Seems like a waste of energy to me. If I were their mainframe, I'd have to become very stern with them."

"Excuse me for interrupting, ma'am, but you seem to be getting off your point," Kryten said. "Were you going to suggest beaming Mr. Rimmer onto the _Ark_, despite the fact that it's a complicated process you've never done before and it could permanently damage his files?"

"Oh, yes, that's exactly what I was going to say," Holly lied.

"Great idea!" Lister exclaimed. "We could send him in ahead of us, and maybe he could find out where Cat is."

Holly pulled up a three dimensional map of the zoo on the screen. She highlighted an area on one of the decks. "I'm assuming they would put him in the feline section, here. I'll see if I can't send Arnold there, shall I?"

Rimmer held up a hand in protest. "Hang on a minute, nobody's asked my position on all this. I'm not about to entrust the whole of my data to you, you batty old computer! And for another thing- hey, what are you doing?" His body was starting to go all static, and in a moment, he disappeared entirely.

"There, now, that wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be," Holly declared. She'd just broken all of Rimmer's digital information down and sent it over to the zoo. Of course, she couldn't be entirely certain that she'd put him all back together properly...

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><p>Cat spent half the morning grooming, then spent the other half gazing at his handiwork. He kept up a one-sided conversation with the lady leopard next door. "Which side do you think is my best side? My left is pretty astounding, but my right is just as unbelievably handsome. Of course, my backside deserves to be cast in bronze." The leopardess yawned. "Alright, you've convinced me. I haven't got a best side, I'm just wonderful all over!"<p>

Suddenly the leopardess sat up, acute attention replacing her indolence. Then she bounded away for the front of her exhibit. Cat heard it, too: the clicking of the service bots. He followed his neighbor's example and headed for the front. A pair of clickers were pushing a pile of raw meat from a cart through the force field wall. The leopardess grabbed a good-sized hunk and retreated into the trees with it.

Next, the clickers wheeled their way over to the Cat's cell. They came through the magic wall, cart and all, with no problem. Cat marched up to them and wagged a finger at them. "I've got a bone or two to pick you, buds. You interrupted my nap last night! And I don't know where you get the balls to go messing with my style the way you did with this freaky earring."

_Splack!_ The clickers unloaded a pile of raw meat at his feet. Cat jumped back to avoid getting juice all over his shoes. "The morning meal has been served," the bots intoned.

"You do food preparation on site?" Cat asked, not willing to consider the alternative. The clickers ignored him and moved on to the next area. "Can I order eggs and bacon instead? How about a bowl of crispies? Or fish? Something cooked?" His cries went unheeded, and his stomach growled at him resentfully. The feline picked up a stringy piece from the pile and sniffed at it dubiously. His lip curled. "Sorry, belly, but it looks like no breakfast today."

Another pair of clickers entered his exhibit after the first two. One of them rolled up to him with a measuring tape and started measuring him. The other one stuck a thermometer in his mouth. "Hey, what is this?" Cat complained as the tape-wielding clicker measured the circumference of his knees. He spat out the thermometer, only to have it replaced with a tongue depressor by the second clicker. The bot shined a light down his throat, then directly into his eyes. That really got the Cat's feckles up. He smacked the clicker's arm aside and wormed his way out from their attentions.

"That's does it! If you clicky things get anywhere near me again, I'm going to have to make mousemeat out of you," he threatened.

The service bots advanced on him nevertheless. "We must collect the medical data on this _felis sapiens_ for our files," they said.

Cat backed up, reconsidering his fight or flight decisions. "Luckily for you, I'm not in the mood for mousemeat today. Bye!" With that, he made for the nearest cat condo and scaled it with impressive speed. Cat peered over the edge of the uppermost platform and found that the clickers couldn't follow him. He waved at them cheerfully. "Can't get me up here, suckers!"

The clickers gathered up their supplies and exited the area. The mechanical voice from above made an announcement. "Commencing stage two of medical enquiry. Decontamination spray begun." Then the ceiling directly above him started raining, torrentially. The Cat was soaked in a matter of seconds in a wash of chemicals. The smell was strong enough to make his nose hairs curl, and not in a good way.

Cat picked his way back down to the ground, dripping and spluttering. He took off his shoes and emptied the water from them, bemoaning the fate of his wardrobe. "Look at this, my jacket's ruined! This stuff will never wash out. And my hair! I don't even have a hair dryer!" He started wringing himself out. "I need to get back to my suits. What am going to wear now?"

Then he spotted it, hung on a low tree branch by the front of the exhibit. Cat walked over and stared at it in disbelief. It was a porridge colored jumpsuit, and it looked alot like something he'd worn in a nightmare once. "That does it; I've gotta get of here!"


	4. Gorilla Rimmer

Rimmer materialized smack dab in the middle of a tree. Trapped, his light bee vibrated madly, then popped him out of the trunk all at once. This left him horribly dizzy, and with a strong desire to empty his nonexistant stomach of its nonexistant contents. He found himself in a densely jungled environment. He also found himself surrounded by gorillas.

For some strange reason, this filled him with an unspeakable sense of joy. The apes had just noticed him, and were coming to investigate. They sniffed at him, to no avail, and tried to touch him. He normally hated it when things went through his image, but he was feeling so very cheerful and content that he didn't mind them at all. He started whistling the tune of 'Zippity Doo Dah'.

"Arnold?" The voice came from inside his head. "Oh dear. That's all wrong, that is."

"Holly!" Rimmer exclaimed. "You're sounding great. How's my favorite computer doing?"

"Hold on, I think I've just given you a euphoria problem."

He waved his hand flippantly. "Oh, don't worry about me, Hols, I feel wonderful!"

Holly changed some files around. Rimmer was suddenly able to think more clearly, but he still felt annoyingly chipper. "Holly, you're a goit, and you're an upstart goit at that." Despite his negative words, he spoke them fondly and with an inane smile stamped on his face. "I'm a senior officer, and I never gave you permission to shoot me off over here. And you didn't even get that right! Does this look like the feline section to you?"

"Almost got it, Arnold. There! You're not happy at all, now, are you?"

"No, I am not!" Rimmer shouted, relieved that he was able to settle his features into a proper scowl. He wagged his arms at the group of gorillas surrounding him, and they backed off a little bit, spooked. "You turned me into a grinning buffoon, a second Lister. And I'm surrounded by a bunch of apes who seem to be under the impression that I'm Jane Goodall. Shoo!"

"You're only off by a little bit, Arnold. You're at the very end of the primate section, right next to the feline section. You should be able to take a peek around. Here, I'll patch you through so you can talk to the others."

Back on Red Dwarf, Kryten and Lister were just warming up a Blue Midget for their trip over to the zoo. The mechanoid's left nipple nut started picking up the signal. He adjusted it carefully. "Mr. Rimmer, sir, can you hear me?"

"That's all I really need, isn't it, more voices in my head. Yes, I can hear you, Kryten."

"Excellent! Can you give us any information on your surroundings?"

"Hairy, and if the steaming piles of refuse are anything to go by, it probably smells worse than Lister's armpits in here." Rimmer picked his way gingerly past several of those piles to check the next exhibit. He found a group of mandrills on the other side of the glass, all sitting around and grooming eachother. "Speaking of Lister, you can tell him that I've just found his long-lost parents in the next cell over."

Lister, sitting next to Kryten in the Midget, overheard him. "Very funny, Rimmer," he said.

"I wouldn't laugh if I were you, Listy. At the rate those technicolored baboons are eating vermin off of eachother, I don't think Mummy and Daddy Lister are going to survive very long."

"Very funny, Rimmer," Lister repeated. "Just get on with it."

The hologram was about to check the other side of the exhibit when a clicker bot scootered its way by the front. Rimmer threw himself behind a particularly leafy plant just in time to avoid detection. "We have a small problem, here," he whispered. "It looks like those four-armed robots are doing their rounds on the place."

Holly spoke up. "I've got just the solution for that. You're probably not going to like it, though."

"What is it I'm not going to like?" Rimmer asked suspiciously.

"I bet you'd absolutely hate my putting you in a gorilla suit, wouldn't you? Something like this?"

He stared down at his body, which was now enveloped in black fur. "Holly, I've never told you this, but it's always been a dream of mine to rip out your circuit cords and skip rope with them. And why the smeg would you have a hologramatic gorilla costume on your hard drive?"

"Just because people die, it doesn't mean they don't like going to halloween parties any more, does it?"

"I'm sure they could manage perfectly well going as ghosts instead of Big Foot's little brother." Rimmer fended off the attention one of the male gorillas was suddenly giving him and made his way to the other side. The glass was a bit steamy, and he had to walk up and down the length of it to find a place he could see through clearly. He squinted into the enclosure, trying to make out what animal it was for.

"Have you found anything yet, Mr. Rimmer?" Kryten asked over the radio.

Rimmer's eyes widened beneath his gorilla head mask. "Er...you'll never believe my luck, but I've just found the Cat. I think he's gone Tarzan. _Is_ that leopard print?"

"What wonderful news!" Kryten exclaimed.

"I don't see how having too much information on the contents of another man's underwear drawer is good news."

"No, I meant that it's wonderful news you've located the Cat. Just sit tight, sir, and we'll be over in a jiffy."

* * *

><p>Cat wiped the condensation from the shiny back wall in order to see himself properly. He'd taken off all of his wet things- well, almost all- and tried to dry them out with his iron. His clothes were still a little bit damp, but anything was better than that horrible jumpsuit.<p>

Something was tapping on the glass from the next exhibit. It was one of the gorillas. Cat walked over and made a face at it. "Boy, are you ugly!" The gorilla was pointing at itself and making incomprehensible gestures about its' forehead. "Now I see where my monkeys get their crazy from. I don't have time for this, can't you see I'm busy planning my escape plan? I've got it all figured out. That magic wall only lets stuff through if it's not alive." This discovery was an unusual stroke of genius for the Cat, made when he tossed the unspeakable jumpsuit of vile unworthiness out into the lane. He followed it up with a less than clever conclusion. "See, all I have to do is hold my breath and pretend to be dead, and it'll let me pass, no problem!"

The gorilla clapped a hand to its face in disbelief. Cat swaggered up the force field. He held his breath and started thinking dead; putting himself in the mindset of a pair of overalls would surely do the trick. He stepped forward, but the wall wasn't buying his act, forcing him to assume a position flat on his back several yards away. Cat sat up and rethought his options. "I know, maybe if I took a running start..."

Service bot 300-65975 was studying the behavior of the GLM Zoo's newest acquisition through the surveillance cameras. Since its arrival, it had refused food, medical examination, and zoo issue clothing. Now it was flinging itself at the facility's famous force field walls. It was difficult to ascertain if this behavior was typical of its species. Even if it wasn't, it was becoming clear to the clicker that this creature was no fit object for observation.

There was protocol set forth to be followed in such circumstances. The _felis sapiens_ would be subjected to DNA extraction, so they might extrapolate more of his kind in the hopes that they would prove more tractable. As for this particular specimen, it would then be resigned to the Hall of Taxidermy.

The Cat's escape attempts were interrupted by the arrival of another clicker. "Did you come to feed me for real, or am I going to have to get ugly with you again?" he asked.

In reply, the clicker held up a tranquilizer gun. "Specimen must hold still for DNA extraction followed by plastification," it chirped.

Things were looking ugly.

* * *

><p><strong>Why was the glass so steamy? The safe answer is because of Cat's ironing all those wet clothes...the other answer could be the fact that he wasn't wearing much of them at the time. ;)<strong>


	5. Parrot Plants

Kryten and Lister stepped through the main gates of the Grace Longshore Memorial Zoo, which opened directly into a beautifully tended garden area. Kryten was reminded of his one-time gardening dream. Considering the amount of dirt they needed to grow in as well as his accident, he was more interested in laundry these days. Still, he couldn't help but admire some of the specimens.

Lister picked up a map from a nearby rack. "Right, let's figure out how to get to the feline section." He started unfolding it as they walked along. And unfolding. And unfolding, until he wound up with a peice of paper nearly the size of himself. "Now which side's up?"

Kryten lent a hand and picked up the other side of the map. "This is where we are, the botanical section. The feline section is..." There was much crinkling of paper while he hunted for it. "Ah, there! Three decks above us. We'll just need to take the lift, which is..." The two of them turned the map around a few times in their search. Kryten stabbed a rubber-coated finger at the spot in exultation. "Here! Just past the petunia beds."

"Great!" said Lister, then he looked at the map in trepidation. "Now how are you supposed to fold these things up again?"

"Allow me, sir." Kryten proceeded to wad it up into a big paper ball. Lister stared at him askance. "It's a well known fact that it's impossible to properly fold a map back together without being some kind of oragami master," the mechanoid explained, and threw the infernal thing into the nearest wastebasket.

They passed through the garden area, with Kryten occasionally making a remark on the plants as they went. At the end they came upon a group of brightly colored stalks, about the length of one's arm and a little bit thicker. "Ah, how fascinating! These are genetically engineered novelty houseplants."

A strange garbly voice arose. "Blobelty houseblants!"

Lister backed off of the plot in surprise. "What was that? Did somebody just say something?"

"Shay slomething?" The plants blurbled.

"They're parrot plants, sir, bred to repeat back pieces of conversation." The plants provided a low, murmured echo to Kryten's words. "For a few years they even outsold those ridiculous talking fish people used to buy for eachother."

Lister took a closer look at one of them. The stalks were hollow on the inside and filled with a thick sap. He cupped his hand around his mouth and shouted, "Dave Lister rocks!"

The liquid in the stalk bubbled as the plant replied, "Dlave Lishter rogs!"

Amused, the scouser kept making remarks to it. "He plays guitar like a god!"

"Guitar lika glod!" Glurped the plant.

"And Rimmer's a smeghead!"

"Smleggid!" The parrot plant bloobled so enthusiastically that it spattered sap into Lister's face.

"I wouldn't have gotten so close, sir," Kryten admonished, "Parrot plant sales plummeted when it turned out that most people were allergic to them."

Lister wiped his face off on his sleeve. "Thanks man, you've informed me in the nick of time! You couldn't have been any nickier, could you?"

They finally made it past the garden, and found the lift next to the lemming exhibit. They emerged, three floors up, between the otter and penguin tanks. Lister was beginning to feel a little stuffy by the time they reached the flamingo cell, and his nose was dripping like a leaky beer tap as they entered the bear section.

He paused to sniffle, and found himself staring a grizzly bear directly in the face. With no discernable barrier between them, it was a little bit disconcerting. "Hi there, big guy. Uh, Kryters, are you sure these force fields are secure?" He sneezed, and the spray bounced off the field and back onto his face.

"They are sir, and they certainly do offer an unbelievable view of nature." Kryten examined a panel set in the wall next to the exhibit. "They even have different viewing options."

Lister joined the mechanoid at the panel and decided to try the funhouse mirror option. Everything behind the force field fence went all wavery, and the bear appeared to be very skinny on the bottom and very fat at the top. Another button changed the color of the barrier, and another one was telescopic, giving Lister an extremely close-up view into the bear's nose. As he bent down to try out the 'Toggle Grid' button, he graced the panel with an especially hearty sneeze.

Kryten automatically went into cleaning mode. He produced a sponge from a compartment in his forearm, and popped the top of his left pinky finger off, revealing a tiny spray nozzle. He kept an emergency store of all-purpose cleaning fluid there. With his mind only on the removal of Lister's nasal issue, he spritzed the control panel generously.

He stopped to rethink his actions when the panel began sparking and crackling, and an alarmingly electric smell filled the air. Kryten couldn't resist crying "Silicon hell!" when the lights went out. Lister fumbled for his lighter and flicked the flame on. The usual white noise of a running ship was absent, and the silence was eerie.

"Mr. Lister, I know you'll never forgive me for placing you in the terrible danger we are in now," Kryten whimpered.

Lister saw a bulky form moving about in the shadows behind Kryten. "You mean the force fields are down and there's smeg-all keepin' the large carnivorous animals in their cages?"

Kryten jammed the cap back on his pinky and carried on moaning. "I have no excuses. And after what happened on the Nova 5!"

There was a faint click from somewhere in the facility, and dim backup lights turned on. Lister wasn't sure he liked this, especially since it revealed the fact that the grizzly bear was standing directly behind Kryten. "Uh, Kryters..."

"I should have known better!" The mechanoid continued his self chastising, unaware of the danger. "I simply wasn't thinking!"

"Kryten, I'm gonna give you a little advice, it goes something like this: LEG IT!" With that, Lister turned and ran for his life.

* * *

><p><strong>Parrot plants are a wonderful excuse to use silly words like glurp and blooble :p<strong>


	6. The Ape and the Pussycat

Cat jumped aside as the clicker shot, neatly avoiding the dart. Another dart followed, which he was able to dodge as well. The feline became trapped in a dangerous dance, hopping and spinning out of the way as the clicker fired at him repeatedly. He couldn't keep this up for long, and even if he could, the robot was advancing on him the whole time, forcing him back. With one last graceful twirl away from a brightly feathered nap enforcer, the Cat dashed to the nearest tree and hauled himself into it.

Darts thunked into the trunk around him as he made his ascent. He went as high up as he could go, hoping that heights would work in his favor again. Nestled amongst the glittering disco balls that sprouted from the tree limbs, Cat looked back down at the clicker. The bot had stopped firing at him and was fiddling with its gun.

Two onlookers were present while all this was going on. One mildly amused leopardess viewed the proceedings whilst sprawled out in a tree of her own. A hologramatic man disguised as a gorilla alternated between hiding his face behind his hands and peeking from behind his hairy fingers to watch with perverse fascination.

Cat sat on a limb with his back against the trunk. He wasn't entirely sure what DNA extracto-whatevering was, but he didn't think it sounded like fun. The last time he'd messed with DNA, he'd turned Lister into a chicken, Kryten into a human with deeply sad fashion sense, and he'd gotten curry monster stains on his shoes. The last thing he wanted was to wind up with three heads, even if they were such nice heads as his own. His suits didn't have enough neck holes for something like that.

The clicker finished reloading the tranquilizer gun and resumed its attack. Cat was sorely disappointed to find that he wasn't out of range when two darts pinged off the disco balls and lodged themselves in his pompadour. "You're just not gonna leave me alone, are you?"

The Cat realized he was going to have to find some way of disabling the trigger-happy robot. He grabbed one of the disco balls, intending to throw it down, but it was attached directly to the tree by its cord. He searched his pockets and drew forth a nail file. Cat used it to saw at the cord frantically, until he was able to yank the ball down, just in time to deflect an unusually well-aimed dart.

He inched out onto the tree limb so he would have a clear shot. Cat was just figuring out his aim when everything went black. The ball dropped from his hands.

After several moments spent clutching the tree branch in total darkness, the backup lights came on. The feline noticed that the clicky thing wasn't doing any clicking, and he climbed down to find it lifeless, with its camera smashed in and its spine bent at a right angle.

Cat plucked the tranquilizer gun from its limp pincers. "Bud, that is what you get for messing with the wrong pussy cat. Aaaaaoooowww!" He boogied his way out of the exhibit at last.

* * *

><p>Pandemonium reigned outside. Animals were running around willy nilly, squabbling with each other. A baboon made itself busy raiding a hotdog stand. A small monkey climbed the statue in the middle of a fountain in order to escape two lionesses that were chasing it. A group of gorillas was tearing apart a cart that was supposed to sell animal puppets. One smallish ape extricated itself from among these and started towards the Cat.<p>

Cat didn't like the looks of that, and he readied his tranquilizer gun, prepared to send the gorilla straight to snooze-ville if it got too close. He was joined by the leopardess from next door, whose tail was twitching angrily at the primate.

The gorilla held up its hands. "Wait, Cat, it's me, Rimmer!"

The Cat's eyes narrowed. "Who do you think you're fooling, sasquatch? It's nap time!"

"Holly, will you get me out of this stupid gorilla suit!" Rimmer yelled frantically, but he didn't get a reply. The blackout had severed his connection with the computer. He jumped as a tranq dart went straight through him. "Look you gimboid, I'm Rimmer, Arnie J, the guy whose favorite slippers you sent down the toilet."

Cat stopped to have a sniff at the situation, and picked up the faint electric odor of the hologram. "It really _is_ you, black hole nostrils. Now I know I'm having a bad day!"

Rimmer was eyeing the leopardess's very sharp teeth nervously. "I'm every bit as delighted to see you, too, but can you please skip the formalities and call off that animal?"

"Calm down, baby, he's only a smeghead." The leopardess gave Rimmer a final glare before losing interest in both of them and wandering off. Cat waved at her and grinned. "That's my new girlfriend," he boasted.

"What's her name? Spotty?"

Cat frowned. "No, that's a stupid name for a leopard. Her name's Leopard!"

"The English language sadly lacks the words I need to describe my opinion of you. Anyhow, I've been sent over here to rescue your sorry behind. I've brilliantly managed to knock out the power in order to free you- never you mind how, it'd go straight over your head. Kryten and Lister were supposed to be meeting me, but I see they must've gotten themselves lost. How typical! I have to do everything for you people, I really do."

Cat stepped aside, deferring to the guy in the gorilla suit mockingly. "Alright, lead the way!"

"Oh. Yes, just follow my lead." Rimmer took a quick look around, trying to figure out where the smeg the exit was. "It's this way, without a shadow of a doubt, I think."

The pair made their way through the feline section cautiously. They stayed along the edges of the walls and scurried from restroom to cheesecake stand to park bench, hiding behind each as they went. Some of the animals weren't keen on leaving their exhibits and snarled at anything that moved past the front of their homes. Others were taking their liberation more seriously, and roamed freely around the facility. At one point the Dwarfers had to inch carefully past a group of big cats that were involved in a spat over the contents of a garbage bin. Once, they came across a tiger that got entirely too interested in them, and Cat had to tranq it before it went beyond mere curiosity.

The two stopped for a break at the end of the feline area, where there was a playground. Cat took the chance to relieve a nearby coffee stand of its creamers. He would rather have had solid food, but the wild animals had already accounted for it all. He sat down on the swings and started with French vanilla shots.

Rimmer sank down into the swing next to the Cat. He'd been trying to get back in contact with Holly, but she wasn't replying, and neither was Kryten, for that matter. He couldn't help but wonder if they were doing it on purpose. The thought wasn't entirely unbelievable. He winced as his companion slurped down a creamer. Then he saw something moving on the play set, something large. He yelled and ducked behind Cat.

Cat had already smelled it, and wasn't concerned. "Cut that out, King Kong, it's just Leopard. You're jumpier than one of grease stain's fleas just before his annual bath."

Rimmer straightened and glared up at the leopardess, who was settled comfortably on a plastic tube that spanned two sections of the play set. "I hate cats. I've always hated them. You're sneaky, you're selfish, and you don't have any respect." He sat down on the swing again. "There was this one stray that used to hang around Io House. The kitchen staff were probably feeding it on the sly. I swear that animal had it out for me. It was always giving me the evil eye, and it even broke into the dorms to spray on my things."

"Sounds like that guy knew what he was doing," Cat said, enjoying the story but sympathizing with entirely the wrong party.

"I didn't even do anything to the miserable beast! Alright, I threw a bucket of water at it once, but that hardly deserves waking up in the morning and finding your shoes smelling like a litter box. Worst of all, it left a dead squirrel on the grounds that nobody found for a few days. There I was, running away from my schoolmates, and I had to go and step on a bloated rodent carcass. It popped!" Rimmer shuddered, remembering the sound it had made. "I spent the rest of the day puking in the nurse's office, with that horrible cat sitting on the window sill, all smugness and self-satisfaction."

Cat licked the last of the hazelnut cream from his upper lip. "I need to get this dude's autograph. You just don't like us because we play by our own rules, and not your stupid monkey ones."

A crackling sound filled Rimmer's head, then Holly's voice. "There you are, then, Arnold. I've been looking all over for you. Sorry about that, the _Ark_'s radio systems were down for a bit. Here I've been trying to get inside some other gorilla's head, would you believe it?"

"Unfortunately, yes," he replied. "First off: get me out of this smegging gorilla suit!" The fur disappeared, and Rimmer never thought he'd be so relieved to see his own light pixels. "Alright, now what's going on? Where are Kryten and Lister?"

"Well, it looks like the power went out across six decks. The others should be somewhere on this deck, but I can't find them. Lister forgot to bring the Holly watch- and you all say _I'm_ the senile one. I was keeping track of Kryten, but his systems appear to be down, too."

"Isn't this magnificent. How do we get out of here?"

"I'd say you're best bet is to head for the parking lot. That's three decks down. The stairs and the lift are at the end of this deck. You're only one section away, actually."

Cat noticed that the leopardess had tensed up. He caught a whiff of what the problem was. "Yeah, and I know what section that is: dog world."

Rimmer eyed him smugly. "My, my, aren't you going to have fun in there?"

The feline reached for the dart gun and headed up onto the play set. "Nothing about this is gonna be fun, bud. We've got trouble." Rimmer also abandoned the swing set for higher ground when he caught sight of trouble in the shape of a large pack of wolves heading their way.

The wolves trotted onto the playground, investigating the area and sniffing around. Their attention went largely to the strange animals gathered on the play set. The leopardess snarled down at them from the plastic tube, the fur on her tail fluffed up in agitation. Cat's hairs were all standing on end, too. One of the bolder wolves advanced on the play set, baring its teeth. Cat darted the canine, but there were far more where that came from.

Rimmer made himself less than useful by panicking and pointing out everything that moved. "There, there, get that one! No wait, there's two more eyeing up the slide! And that one's found the steps!"

The leopardess took it upon herself to frighten off the wolves that were trying to climb up the slide, while Cat tranquilized the one on the stairs. It staggered towards him, finally slumping down at his feet, twitching. The feline looked out at the circling wolves grimly.

"Why have you stopped shooting?" Rimmer cried.

Cat shook the tranq gun. "There's a wise old cat saying that goes, 'Your pants go brown when your ammo is down.' It's really weird how appropriate that is for this situation."

* * *

><p><strong>At this point, I've run out of buffer chapters and am now buffless, so things might be coming alng a little more slowly. Also, thanks to <strong>**HarryPotterTNGfan for your review. :)**


	7. An Arm and a Leg

Lister was hiding inside a port-a-potty, debating with himself if he should check outside to see if it was safe to come out yet. He didn't look back once after he'd run for it, but there was definitely something chasing him at one point. He threw himself into this smelly little plastic haven as soon as he set eyes on it. Whatever creature was after him pawed at the sides of the container, and at one point knocked on it hard enough to set it wobbling. Thankfully, it hadn't been able to tip it over entirely. Lister didn't mind smelling strongly, but that would've been too much even for him.

It seemed like he had spent ages in here, breathing in stifling air while listening to the noises going on outside. Most of them were alarming, snarly, hungry carnivorous animal sorts of noises. He was worried about Kryten, and couldn't help but feel bad for leaving him behind, even if he didn't know he was doing it at the time. Now Lister felt bold enough to crack open the door for a fresh breath and a look around.

Aside from a few flamingoes that were wandering about, the coast seemed to be clear. Lister carefully pushed the door open further, but caught a glimpse of something coming from the side of the port-a-potty and quickly shut the door again. At least he tried to- the edge of his jacket got stuck in it, and he didn't want to try moving it for fear of attracting the attention of whatever was out there. Lister felt another sneeze coming on and clapped his hands over his face. It didn't do him much good other than to muffle the sound and get snot on his fingers.

"Mr. Lister? Is that you?"

Lister threw the door open. "Krytie man? I was worried about you! I thought the bear might've...smeg."

Kryten was leaning against the wall of the port-a-potty, supporting himself with his left arm, as his right arm now ended at the elbow in a mess of wires and shorn metal. His left leg was missing entirely, and his casing was all scratched up. "I did have a small amount of trouble with that grizzly bear, sir, but as you can see, I've been fortunate enough to escape with minimal damage."

"You call missing major body parts 'minimal damage'? You look like a toy that a two-year-old's been playin' with. You even got the drool and the tooth marks!" True enough, Kryten's head bore distinct chew marks, which wasn't much of a design improvement.

"Why Mr. Lister, I've still got two and a half perfectly functioning limbs. I think I'm doing just dandy."

Lister stepped away from his hiding place, checking for danger. Whatever had been chasing him had apparently found something better to make lunch out of, if the flamingo feathers scattered all over were any indication. "We still have to find the Cat. Have you heard anything from Rimmer?"

Kryten shook his head. "I'm afraid not, sir, my nipple nut is stuck on the country music station. It's a hideous state of affairs."

The space bum eyed his broken companion. "Can you even get around like that?"

Kryten hopped out on his one leg. "I'm sure I'll be quite alright," he said, before crashing into a potted tree.

Lister helped him up. "We're in a bad way with you stumblin' around like this. I really hate to ask, but do you know what that bear did with your limbs anyway?"

"After he finished mauling me, I think he took the pieces back to his den."

"I think we're gonna have to go back and look for them," Lister said reluctantly. "We'll never be any use to Rimmer or the Cat with you playing pogo stick."

"With respect, sir, I think that's the stupidest idea since the time you decided to go tobogganing down the cargo loading ramp on supply deck P and actually expected to land the jump over that vat of molasses." Lister winced at the memory. They'd had to gently warm the whole tub just to get him out, and he was picking bits of molasses out of his ears for weeks. "If I'm a hindrance to you, I insist you leave me behind. You could even unscrew my head and take it with you."

"I'm not leavin' you behind, man, so come on. We're going to get your limbs back."

The pair crept back to the bear's exhibit. The only other large animal they met was a black bear, who was thankfully much more interested in the dumpster it was rooting through than in them. Lister left Kryten on a park bench nearby and went to investigate the enclosure. The mechanoid's forearm was lying unguarded on the leaf litter. In the back of the exhibit was a concrete cave. Lister looked for any sign of the bear within its dark mouth, but he neither saw nor heard anything. Taking his chances, he tiptoed in to retrieve the arm.

Propped up on the park bench, Kryten was the first to spot his missing leg, clutched in the jaws of the grizzly bear that was emerging from its cave. Lister held the arm up triumphantly, then caught sight of the unwelcome company. He waved the mechanoid's hand at the bear. "Hey there, Yogi."

The bear dropped the leg and growled in response. Lister threw the arm past it. "Fetch!" The bear glanced at it for a second before turning its attention back to him. He started backing up. "Oh smeg..."

A team of service bots clicked their way onto the scene, dispatched to deal with the breakout. All of them were armed with tranquilizer guns. One of them noticed a broken mechanoid that was whimpering fearfully on a park bench, and then found a human being menaced inside the bear exhibit. The clicker loaded the animal up with darts as Lister turned to run. The bear charged after him before the drugs took effect, causing it to fall full on top of its intended prey as it passed out.

The clicker wheeled over to Lister as he struggled to crawl out from underneath the slumbering bear. "Zoo visitors are prohibited from entering the exhibits. Failure to adhere to this rule results in immediate ejection from the park."

"You'd have to get me out from under this smegging fat bear first," Lister gasped. "I was only in here gettin' back some personal property." He finally worked himself out from under the beast and sat panting on the ground.

"Please exit the exhibit area immediately," the clicker said in clipped tones.

Lister gathered up Kryten's limbs, both of which were coated in saliva, and presented them to the mechanoid. While Kryten attached his pieces, they watched the clickers going about their business. They were darting any critters that were on the loose and dragging them back to their appropriate places. Then they would attach a flat rectangular device to the edge of the exhibits, which set up an emergency force field, denoted by a web of red light beams.

Kryten stood up to test his damaged leg. It was slightly crooked, and added a limp to his already unusual gait, but at least he could get around now. He twiddled his nipple nut again, relieved to find that his nanobots had repaired it. He switched the frequency to tune in to Holly.

"Oh, there you are, Kryten. That's good, I've got everybody in contact now, one big happy family," she said. "By the way, just thought I'd mention, Arnold and the Cat are about to be ripped to shreds and eaten. Well, to be technically correct, only the Cat's going to be eaten. Arnold's going to have to stand there and watch, though I guess that's not really going to make his day, either. Anyhow, if you head down the lane and take a right at the T-section, you should be able to find their desiccated remains. Or rescue them, I suppose that depends on whether or not you want to stop at the gift shop first."

"What?" Kryten yelped.

Lister jumped up. "We'd better get a move on."

The clicker that had rescued him from the bear barred their way, chirping, "You are not allowed to move freely about the facility. Your tickets have been revoked for breaking visitor conduct rule 71-b, 'Zoo visitors are prohibited from entering the exhibits'. You are also being ejected from the park and fined for vandalizing GLM zoo property, pertaining to the destruction of View Option Box 843 and the power outages of decks E-18 through E-24."

The service bot only came up to waist height, and they didn't seem very fast, either. "Who's going to stop me?" Lister challenged.

With deep _clack clack clacking,_ three very much larger specimens wheeled over to confront him. These clickers were every bit as tall as he was, with thick claws rather than delicate pincers on the ends of their robust arms. "Our security bots will escort you out of the premises," the smaller clicker informed.

Lister snatched the tranquilizer gun from it. "They'll have to catch me first!" He and Kryten were on the run again, this time with a team of angry robots on their tails and a pair of friends to save.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Bit of a delay on this one, this was where I more or less ran out of plans, and I've mostly been sitting and glaring at the computer. Had a convenient brainstorm in the middle of the night and now I've most of the rest hashed out, so it shouldn't take so long next time. Also, honorable mentions to reviewers FezzesRCool25 and CazEvelyn.<em>**


	8. Zoo Outlaws

Cat held the empty tranquilizer gun like a club, ready to brain any mangy mongrel that might come too close. The wolves were keeping their distance from the leopardess for now. It wouldn't be long, though, until they figured out they could gang up on her, and then have him for dessert. "Hey, buddy, maybe you can run out there and distract them for me while I get away," Cat suggested.

"Buddy, is it?" Rimmer scoffed. "It's always _alphabet head_ this and _laundry chute nostrils_ that, but the second you get into trouble, it's _buddy_. Well, 'buddy', you can forget that idea. There's no way on Io I'm going to play decoy for you."

"Why not?" Cat exclaimed. "They can't hurt you, you're already dead."

"That might be the case, but it doesn't stop them from scaring me. Now hold still so I can hide behind you."

One of the wolves circling them on the playground jumped up with a yelp, pawing at a feathered dart that was stuck in its snout. Kryten and Lister had arrived, the latter completely out of breath from his dash, but firing doughtily away with his tranq gun. The wolves rounded on him, too many to cope with at once.

Then the three beefy security clickers caught up with them. Fortunately, their priority codes put the escaped animals at a higher importance than Dave Lister, zoo outlaw. The service bots started darting the wolves, too. One of them turned its attention to the Cat, who still qualified as an escaped animal. "Let's get outta here while they're busy with the mutts," he said, and made a speedy exit from the play set by way of the bright green plastic twisty slide.

The four Dwarfers reunited on the far side of the playground and headed on through the canine section, leaving the big clickers behind to finish with the wolves. Lister kept his tranq gun ready to fix anything that might regard the group as food items. Cat noticed how much the worse for wear Kryten looked. "What happened to you, ice cube head?"

"I had a small disagreement with a grizzly bear on the proper use of my body, but as you can see, any damage I've sustained is purely aesthetic in nature," Kryten explained as they went.

"Buddy, that's the worse kind of damage there is! Wait until you hear about the day _I've_ been having. I've been kidnapped, locked up, soaked, poked at, fed wrong, dressed wrong, and rescued wrong. The last guy I want to see trying to save my beautiful self is toilet brush hair over here."

Lister darted a few over-excited African painted wild dogs. "Who do you think got you kidnapped in the first place?" he said.

"Don't listen to him, he's making it out like I deliberately planned to get rid of you." Rimmer protested. "I was pressured into it! They somehow knew all my weak spots. Those robots are merciless. It was like talking to a used car salesman."

"I'd give you a few kicks in your weak spots if I could," Cat growled. "Just you wait, I'll make you regret the day you ruined this outfit. Do you know how long it took to do this sequin trim?"

They reached the end of the canine section with no trouble aside from the sort that was brewing between Rimmer and the Cat. Kryten tried put a pause to their bickering. "Sirs, I appreciate that you have differences to sort out, but please be so kind as to save it until we're safely back on Red Dwarf. Now, the lift doesn't appear to have power, so we're going to have to take the stairs down."

Cat halted their progress at the top of the stairwell. "Hey wait a minute, what happened to Leopard? Do you think those clicky things might've got her?"

"What if they did?" Rimmer asked. "You're not seriously thinking of going back to rescue her? I didn't think you had it in you."

"That's because I don't. I'm just saying, it's too bad, we made a cute couple. Now let's get out of here!" He started down the three flights of stairs as quickly as his flashy shoes could take him.

The group emerged into a food court at the bottom. Lister sat down heavily at the nearest plastic picnic table. He wasn't a person who could be easily mistaken for being fit, and his recent exercises with bears, wolves, and angry robots made that fact all the more evident. The parrot plant allergy wasn't helping him out, either. "Where are we?" he asked, wiping his watering nose on his sleeve.

Kryten downloaded Holly's three dimensional map so he didn't have to resort to a paper one. "We're on the correct floor, but we're on the opposite side of the ship from the parking bay. All we have to go through is the GELF and hybrid animal section, and we'll be back at the garden area you and I came through earlier."

The lights flickered back to full life, and elderly hits from the 2060's began to play over the food court's intercoms. Lister jumped up and cheered. "Power's back up! That means the food dispensers'll be workin' again." He headed to the nearest Leopard Lager dispenser and started digging through his pockets for money to put in.

Kryten noticed the blue tag in Cat's ear. "What a lovely earring you have there, sir."

"I used to kind of sort of like you, bud, but you've just destroyed my faith in your good taste chip. This thing has got to go."

"If you'll allow me, sir, I think I can take care of that." The mech used one of his finger gadgets to clip the blue tag from his ear. While Cat drew forth his pocket mirror to admire his newly uninhibited looks, Kryten took a closer look at it. "It's a good thing we removed this. It has a tracking device on it! Suggest we move from this location immediately." He broke the tag in two.

With a lager in one had and a tranq gun in the other, Lister was ready to go. They left the food court and headed for the hybrid section. Under the archway leading into it, however, was a tangled mess of red lasers. "Of course," Kryten said, as they looked at it in dismay, "With the animals still escaped, not to mention us on the loose, they've blocked off the individual sections in order to minimize the chaos."

Cat held up his hands. "Stand back, everybody, I know how this works. The guy with the slinkiest moves does some cool acrobatic type stuff through there to avoid all the red lights, then deactivates them from the other side."

"With all due respect, sir, while your slink qualifications may be up to snuff, your technological abilities are shakier than a peg-legged fat man crossing a tight rope. Besides," Kryten pressed a button on a keypad next to the entryway, and the lasers disappeared. "The deactivation controls are on _this_ side of the field."

The Cat left off removing his jacket, huffing, "Way to steal my thunder, bud."

Lister took point with the tranquilizer gun, knowing they could run into almost anything here. The first animals they saw was a flock of birds, each with the body of a chicken but the head and tail of a squirrel. Kryten plucked a species guide from a nearby rack and looked them up. "Squickens," he noted, "Not dangerous." The Dwarfers moved on, and the squickens scattered, clucking.

Then they edged their way past something that was at first glance an average elephant. It was reaching up into a tree with its trunk. On closer inspection, it turned out that the long nose doubled as a neck, with a giraffe's head at the end. "A girelephant; large but not aggressive," the mechanoid assured.

The Dwarfers continued on in this fashion, with Kryten identifying each bizarre creature as they came upon it and informing everybody on whether or not it was dangerous. The half lion, half gazelle beasts were happily more herbivore than carnivore. The alliwolvergatorine combination could have proved a threat if it hadn't slept through the entire breakout and was now safely contained in its cell. The turtles with the long necks and forked tongues, snurtles, were harmless as long as they weren't venomous.

Kryten was scanning the animal guide for information on tiger/duck hybrids when, with a wet _smack_, the paper was whipped from his hands. The party turned to find that the culprit was a toad the size of your average automobile. It gulped the paper down with a mouth the size of your average automobile's trunk, the upper lip curling over the lower in a beak that a snapping turtle would be proud of. "What exactly is that one, Kryten?" Rimmer asked nervously.

"I don't know, sir, it's eaten my species guide, but I'm quite sure this one's dangerous." Everybody started backing up at the mechanoid's announcement.

"Don't worry, guys, I'm gonna feather the smegger so much he'll be considered a new species," Lister said, turning the dart gun on the large amphibian. Before he could fire, the toad's tongue shot out, neatly sticking the weapon before drawing it back to swallow it whole. "Alright, back to plan B, scarper time!"

The group split up and ran for it. Lister and Kryten dove behind a hotdog cart as the toad let out a thunderous croak and hopped after them. Its tongue whipped out over the cart, sending condiment bottles flying.

Rimmer and the Cat sought safety at a small shop that sold animal-themed garden ornaments. While the hologram hopped over the counter to hide, Cat found a more suitable option, a door in the wall next to the shop labeled 'Aquarium, Employee Access Only'. "Hey guys, over here! I think I found a way out!" He turned back to the others, but they were a bit busy at the moment.

"Let go of the hat, sir!" Kryten was imploring, as he held Lister tightly about the waist. Lister was, in turn, attached to his deerstalker by both hands. He was trying to wrest it away from the monster toad's tongue in a tug-of-war match over top of the hotdog cart. "You have to let it go!" The mechanoid's pleas went unheeded.

The Cat didn't care what became of Lister's hat- in fact, he thought it'd be a mercy if the oversized tadpole ate it. He punched the 'open' button on the keypad, but the screen was asking for a pass code. At a loss, he decided to try force, so he grabbed a sturdy plastic chipmonkey figurine from the shop and started smashing it against the pad. This sophisticated approach caused sparks to fly from around the edges of the door. Cat threw himself at it, pushing as hard as he could until it slid open several inches. "I got the door open!" He called out.

With a triumphant yell, Lister tumbled backwards together with Kryten, clutching his beloved hat to his chest. The toad leapt after them, crashing into the hotdog stand as it did so. The pair scrambled away while it was busy pulling its leg out of one of the cart's wheels. They squeezed through the door after the Cat, along with Rimmer, who abandoned the safety of the garden gnome shop and darted through the gap just in time to avoid a last smack of the toad's tongue.

The group let out a collective sigh as the door snapped shut behind them. The toad scrabbled at it from the other side, but even if it could have opened the door, it would've been too big to get through. A narrow road of bare steel stretched before them, a grid of paths that crossed the tops of the huge tanks that made up the aquarium. The air was close and dank. Bands of light shifted along the close ceiling, thrown up by the open water.

To Cat's surprise, he saw Leopard crouched out on one of the paths. Her paw hovered over the water, then darted in, scooping out a brilliantly colored fish. It flapped wildly in the air for a second before it dropped back in. The leopardess's attention had shifted to the newcomers.

"Hi, baby!" Cat waved at her.

The leopardess stared at the group intently, head cocked to one side, as though deep in thought. Then, she spoke. "_Now_ I remember what I was doing here. I was looking for you people."

"If I were you, I'd be looking for me, too," Cat said, as everybody else stared in astonishment. "Wait, _what?_"

"I should probably introduce myself," the leopardess replied. "My name's Grace Longshore."


	9. Spots of Trouble

The leopardess led the party across the aquarium catwalks, explaining to them as she went. "When this zoo was built, I was their biggest benefactor. I traveled with the _Ark_ and sat on their board of directors until the day I died. Then they named the place after me and resurrected me as a hologram. I oversaw my zoo for centuries."

"Do you know what happened to the human race?" Lister interrupted.

Grace's ears lowered. "No, and for a very good reason. You see, I'd been working on ways to project my personality files into living things - you get bored after a few hundred years. It was fine enough to take a spin as a hawk or a mountain lion for a few hours, but something in the codes went wrong, and one day I woke up and found myself trapped as an armadillo. For millennia, I've been living from creature to creature. When one dies, I'm projected into another at random."

"How come you didn't just tell us all this when I met you?" Cat wondered.

"Honey, when you've been living as an animal for three million years, you tend to forget the human side of things. You did remind me, though. I suppose I should thank you for that much."

"That explains why she kept following us around," Rimmer said.

"I still think it had something to do with my breathtaking charisma," the Cat asserted.

Grace rolled her eyes at that. "After I escaped the service bots, it all came flooding back to me, and I've been hunting you lot down until now."

"So what now?" Lister started, but there was a crackling over the zoo intercom, the voice a clicker interrupting.

"This area of the GLM zoo is off limits to zoo guests. Please remain where you are and wait to be escorted off the premises and fined for trespassing, vandalism, and the theft of zoo property _felis sapiens_."

"Damn those bots, they must've found us through the security cams," Grace hissed.

"But aren't you the zoo boss or somethin'?" Lister asked. "Can't you just tell them to leave us alone?"

"Their programming is too narrow minded, they won't recognize me." Grace replied. "When I first got stuck like this, I tried getting them to help me back, but to them, a talking octopus doesn't equal a hologram. We have to get out of here, otherwise I'm back to bathing myself with my own tongue, your friend's getting turned into a stuffed animal, and you boys are looking at a heavy fine. That or eight months of poop scooping duty." Kryten didn't think the last part sounded so bad, but then, he was the only one with a passion for cleaning and a nose with a 'mute' option.

The leopardess led them quickly to the nearest exit, just over top of the shark tanks. The Cat's mouth watered at the sight of the smaller fish swimming around, but he decided against trying to nab a quick snack. There were much bigger fish in there that might want to return the favor. After carefully making their way to the other side, they were met by another mass of laser beams blocking the door. Again, the off button was easily accessible, much to Cat's disappointment.

Kryten stopped Grace as she headed down one end of the hall they emerged into. "Ma'am, isn't the parking bay in the other direction?"

She turned on him, tail flicking with impatience. "It is, but we're not going there right now. You have to help me get back in control first. We have to get to the hologram simulation suite, I'll tell you what to do from there."

"My sincere condolences on your problems, but we have our own to sort out. We're a bit in the middle of escaping here." Rimmer told her.

"And bad luck you'll have of it, too. The zoo is in a state of emergency, which means the parking bay doors are sealed," Grace said smugly. "I'm the only one who knows the code to open them, and after you've been kind enough to assist me, I'd be thrilled to give it to you."

"My God, you're almost as conniving as I am, aren't you?" Rimmer wasn't sure whether to be impressed or annoyed.

"Settle down, man," Lister said. "Sorry about him. We don't mind helpin' you out."

"Good." Grace lead them onwards. They had emerged into a twisting series of corridors, all employee access ways through the ship. She took them to the nearest lift. The hologram sim suite was all the way on deck A-2, so the ride up was a long one. Several minutes into the trip, Grace started licking her paw and picking at the fur between her toes with her teeth.

"So...how exactly do we get you back to normal?" Lister asked.

The leopardess stopped grooming and drew herself into a prim sitting position, tail curled neatly around her paws. "Sorry about that. I keep slipping into old habits. Once we're in, I only need someone to open direct programming on the sim disc, delete the chameleon projection codes while keeping my personality files, then reload them onto my core image."

The Cat grinned. "That's just what I was thinking."

"Sounds like a job for me and Kryten." Lister said.

The elevator finally reached its destination, and the crew emerged onto deck A-2. Directly across from them lay the entrance to the hologram sim suite, another opening that was safe-guarded by laser-field. Kryten went to deactivate it, but found that this time the panel wasn't on their side. "Maybe we could try throwing Mr. Rimmer's light bee through," he suggested.

Cat stepped forward. "Excuse me, but I think we all know who this job is for."

"And I'm sure that Miz Longshore would be delighted to have a noodle-brained lack wit re-arranging her files," Rimmer snorted, watching as the Cat took off his jacket and smoothed down his hair.

Kryten accepted the jacket and began folding it carefully. "In that case, I don't suppose it makes a difference which of you goes in. Fortunately, the Cat need not do everything. All he has to do is switch off the barrier, a task which you, sir, are unable to perform. I should be able to help him do it, if I simply..." The mechanoid popped one of his eyes out and handed it to the Cat. "This way I'll be able to see what he's doing, so I can relay it to Miss Longshore."

Cat went into action, stepping over a series of thin red lights, bending over backwards to limbo through a space. He shimmied around a few vertical bars and twisted into a series of convoluted poses in order to work his way through the dangerous lattice-work. His last obstacle was a gap in the field, through which he dived head first to land with a somersault. He leapt to his feet and performed a victory dance. "I'm so amazing, I take my own breath away!"

"Just deactivate the laser field," Grace called.

Cat took a look at the room. A series of consoles took up the floor, playing host to a baffling array of blinking lights and colorful buttons. A network of wires worked their way up the walls between mounted screens that spewed blocks of numbers. He took Kryten's eye out of his pocket and pointed it around. "Okay, what do I do first?"

"There should be a panel by the door," Grace said.

Even though Kryten had activated his split screen vision, he still found it difficult to concentrate on the information his other eye was bringing him. It reminded him of the time he'd accidently sent them through the wash. "Please hold my optical receiver steady, sir. Mechanoids can't get ill, but I believe I'm experiencing a very close approximation."

Cat obliged and held the eye still, turned towards himself so Kryten would have the benefit of seeing his face. "There's panels all over the place, how am I supposed to know which one it is?"

Kryten looked to Grace for the answer. "It has a blue screen on it, you need to press the green button, then 'one'," she supplied.

Cat found two panels with blue screens. One had all white buttons with only one green, the other had all green buttons. He assumed the one with all green buttons was the right one. "It's this one, isn't it?"

Kryten caught a shaky glimpse of the panels from the palm of Cat's hand as the feline reached forward. "No, wait, that's the alarm!" It was too late- the sirens began blaring.

Cat stabbed frantically at the buttons, trying to shut them off. "Hang on, Mr. Amazing's got everything under control!"

Out in the hall, Lister noticed that the lift had activated. "Uh, guys, I think we've got company coming." The alarm finally cut out, but the damage was done. "Cat, get those lasers down!"

The feline held Kryten's eye up to the other panel. "Is it this one then?"

"Yes, I think it is," Kryten said as the lift doors opened, revealing a pair of security clickers.

Cat peered at the eye sternly. "Are you sure, bud? I don't want to press the wrong thing again."

"I'm positive it's that one!" The mechanoid yelled as a clicker started chasing him around the hallway.

Cat reached a hand out to the panel, then called, "What was the combination?"

"Green, one!" Grace shrieked at him from outside. Kryten had managed to stuff himself into a supply cabinet in his bid to escape zoo justice. One clicker was trying to drag him out by his feet, but he had become jammed in the small space. The other clicker caught Lister by one of his locks and was beginning to drag him off down the hall. Rimmer performed martial arts moves a safe distance away from it, trying to draw it off.

"Keep your spots on, babe, I've got it." Cat finally deactivated the laser grid, and the leopardess rushed into the suite with him.

"I've got to get back in control now. Your pals are in trouble, and we're going to be too, as soon as reinforcements show up. Do everything I tell you to do, and don't touch anything unless I say so. Pull that lever and enter 773159 into this computer. Seven seven _three_, I said, not four!"

"I always get those two mixed up," Cat admitted as he tapped the code in.

Grace badgered him through the complicated process, her patience lost long before he managed to change the background color on the monitor, turn on the fire sprinklers on deck F-5, or jettison the ship's supply of plastic drinking straws. "Alright, last bit, hit voice command, tell it to reboot me- ow!"

"What's the last part?" Cat turned back to her. Grace had slumped to the floor, a dart stuck in her back. A clicker stood in the doorway of the hologram simulation suite, holding a tranquilizer gun. It fixed the eye of its camera on him.

Cat slapped his hand down on the voice command button. "Reboot hologram!" Nothing happened. A dart pinged off the screen, which read 'Please Confirm'. He was searching the console for the appropriate button to press when a second dart nipped him in the back of his neck. The feline pressed down what he thought looked like an 'enter' key before the drugs took effect, and he crumpled into an undignified heap on the ground.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Wooo, birthday chapter- I'm old as RD now.<em>**


	10. Vengeance

When the Cat swam back to the land of the wakeful, he was still lying on the floor of the hologram simulation suite. A clicker was standing over him, administering a shot to him. He grabbed his arm where the needle had been and scrambled backwards. A hand descended on his shoulder. "Hey, relax, everything's fine now. It was just tryin' to wake you up." It was Lister.

The clicker wheeled backwards to give him some space to get up. Cat kept his distance from the bot as he looked around. Lister, Kryten and Rimmer were in the room with him. A group of several more service bots were there, all gathered at attention and receiving orders from a woman with an 'H' on her forehead. She was middle-aged, blonde, and dressed in smart business attire. After dispatching the last of the clickers, she turned to him.

"Glad we got you back on your feet, Cat."

"You're Leopard?" he said. "You look pretty good for a dead person."

Grace swept a hand down her outfit in appreciation of the complement. "I was a lot older than this when I died. You accidently loaded me into an earlier body- a mistake I certainly don't mind being made."

"What can I say? I am a whiz when it comes to this technolilogical stuff."

"Only just," the zoo director replied.

"Yeah, she called off the crazy robots as soon as she was loaded," Lister explained, rubbing the back of his head. "What're you gonna do now? You want to join us up on Red Dwarf?" he asked Grace hopefully. Coming across somebody who didn't want to rip out your brain stem was a rare enough treat, and to a humanity-starved human, the chance of having fresh company on board was an even better one.

The woman let him down gently. "I'm sorry, but no. I've been with my zoo for millions of years. I can't abandon all my animals, especially not to the service bots. They need human guidance. These creatures might be the last of their kind in the universe."

"That doesn't mean y'have to leave, does it? You could just tag along..."

"I don't think floating aimlessly through space is the best thing for them. I am hoping to find an S-3 planet, somewhere I can release the animals and let nature run its course the way it should. Now, I've unlocked everything, so you're free to leave."

"Thank God!" Rimmer declared.

The Dwarfers took the lift back down to the parking bay. A clicker stood at the entrance to the hangar, handing out free buttons and chirping, "Thank you for visiting the Grace Longshore Memorial Zoo! We hope you enjoyed your stay. Please come again!"

"Fat chance," Lister told it, but took a button anyhow and pinned it to his jacket. He might not mind life-threatening adventures so much if he always got a souvenir from them at the end.

Everybody piled into Blue Midget for the ride home. Lister started her up whilst Cat complained. "I can't believe she's just leaving me like this, after all we've been through together."

"Sorry Cat," Lister offered as he guided the Midget out into space.

"What for? She's not even my type. Those heels clashed with her 'H', and she didn't even thank me for saving the day."

"You could do that much for us," Rimmer said. "We all risked our lives going in there to get you."

"Buddy, I'll thank you when I get my hands on a hot iron, a jar of honey, and some- hey, where's my jacket?"

Kryten reluctantly handed the jacket over to the Cat. It was rumpled and creased, with half the sequins fallen off. It also had tire marks stained across the front of it. "I'm terribly sorry, sir, I dropped it while I was fleeing, and a service bot must have run it over."

Cat slumped back in his seat, cradling the ruined garment in his arms. He was too exhausted to be very upset. "It was already done for, bud. I'll just give it a Viking funeral in the waste incinerator. What kind of things do you send with a suit into the afterlife? Maybe a pocket handkerchief, and some cans of tuna in case it gets hungry...And what should I wear?" The feline quickly forgot about his misfortune as he set about planning the details for the ceremony.

Lister smiled through the hives that were beginning to form on his face. "Good to have you back, Cat."

* * *

><p>The Cat wandered into the science room that evening, looking for a place to take a long overdue nap. Everybody else had already turned in for the night. Rimmer, currently in bad standing with the crew, had slunk off to bed first thing. Kryten had taken Lister to the Medi-Bay to treat his reaction. The <em>Ark,<em> too, had made its departure, disengaging its orbit from Red Dwarf as soon as they'd arrived back home.

Cat found the perfect spot to sleep- a pile of junk that was accumulated on the floor. He started kicking things around to make it more comfortable. It seemed to consist of random paraphernalia - a magic eight ball, a notebook, a pair of pajamas, a set of boxing gloves, several technician's uniforms, and an airless Inflatable Ingrid doll... "Hey, this is alphabet head's stuff, isn't it?" He said, bending down to pick up an Io House school ring to add to his collection of shiny things. "What's it all doing in here?"

Holly appeared on the screen. "Arnold had the skutters bring it in. This is where the holoscanner is. It scans real physical objects, and converts them into digital form. That's it right over there."

Cat inspected the scanner. It was a heavy column of machinery, with a chamber built in the middle for inserting things into. The scanning piece hung down from the top of the chamber. "This thingy turns real things into 'H' things?"

"Basically."

He opened the holoscanner and untwisted the scanning eye from inside it. "Is this part important?"

"Yeah, without it, the whole thing's pretty much useless. Hey, where are you going with that?"

Cat stopped in the doorway and waggled the piece at Holly. "I just need to visit the little kitty's room." He headed for the nearest bathroom, dropped the eye down the toilet, and flushed.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Tada, I actually finished something. :) Thanks again to my reviewers for making my head big and keeping me going.<strong>_


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